OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo participated in a roundtable meeting on Tuesday with African countries to discuss the impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), OPEC announced in a statement via Twitter on Tuesday.
Barkindo participated in the virtual African Ministerial Roundtable meeting to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on Africa’s energy sector, the statement said.
The roundtable was co-hosted by Senegal’s Ministry of Petroleum and the International Energy Agency (IEA)
'Barkindo stressed the importance of cooperation and broad stakeholder dialogue as a mechanism for achieving sustainable oil market stability and for addressing global challenges such as energy poverty, which remains on top of the global agenda despite setbacks brought on by COVID-19,' the statement said.
'[He] called on African producers to join global efforts through the OPEC-Non-OPEC Declaration and Charter of Cooperation to achieve a sustainable oil market stability and prosperity for all,' he added.
Currently, the 13-member OPEC group has seven member states in Africa -- Algeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Nigeria, and Republic of the Congo.
Out of these seven nations, Angola and Nigeria failed in May to cut their individual outputs below requested levels as per the OPEC+ agreement, and produced more than their quotas. Under the latest OPEC+ deal, they are now required to curb their output in July, August and September.
OPEC and non-OPEC oil-producing nations, dubbed as the OPEC+ group, agreed on June 6 to extend the current production cut agreement that curbs total output by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) from June 30 until the end of July to bring balance to the global oil market and raise low prices.
However, most African OPEC members still struggle with economic difficulties due to lower oil production and weak crude prices, since a very high percentage of their income depends on oil sales and export revenues.
By Ovunc Kutlu
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr